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Today in History 3-3

Today is Sunday, March 3, the 62nd day of 2013. There are 303 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On March 3, 1931, “The Star-Spangled Banner” became the national anthem of the United States as President Herbert Hoover signed a congressional resolution.

On this date:

In 1845, Florida became the 27th state.

In 1849, the U.S. Department of the Interior was established.

In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed a measure creating the National Academy of Sciences.

In 1894, British Prime Minister William Gladstone submitted his resignation to Queen Victoria, ending his fourth and final premiership.

In 1913, more than 5,000 suffragists marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., a day before the presidential inauguration of Woodrow Wilson.

In 1923, Time magazine, founded by Briton Hadden and Henry R. Luce, made its debut.

In 1943, in London’s East End, 173 people died in a crush of bodies at the Bethnal Green tube station, which was being used as a wartime air raid shelter.

In 1945, the Allies fully secured the Philippine capital of Manila from Japanese forces during World War II.

In 1969, Apollo 9 blasted off from Cape Kennedy on a mission to test the lunar module.

In 1974, a Turkish Airlines DC-10 crashed shortly after takeoff from Orly Airport in Paris, killing all 346 people on board.

In 1991, motorist Rodney King was severely beaten by Los Angeles police officers in a scene captured on amateur video. Twenty-five people were killed when a United Airlines Boeing 737-200 crashed while approaching the Colorado Springs airport.

In 1993, health pioneer Albert Sabin (SAY’-bihn), developer of the oral polio vaccine, died in Washington, D.C. at age 86.

Ten years ago: Israeli troops arrested Hamas co-founder Mohammed Taha in a deadly raid. (Israel released him 14 months later.) President George W. Bush offered a rough blueprint for adding drug benefits to Medicare. Malcolm Kilduff, the White House spokesman who announced to a shocked world the death of President John F. Kennedy, died in Beattyville, Ky., at age 75.

Five years ago: Democrat Barack Obama said his campaign had never given Canada back-channel assurances that his harsh words about the North American Free Trade Agreement were for political show, despite a Canadian memo indicating otherwise.

One year ago: Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh apologized on his website to Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke (fluhk), whom he had branded a “slut” and “prostitute” after she testified to congressional Democrats that she wanted her college health plan to cover her birth control.